Author: virtualfarmboy

How many books in a library?

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November 28th’s New York Times had an article that I’m sure fascinated many readers: A Slippery Number: How Many Books Can Fit in the New York Public Library? I’m even more sure that it was of interest to the various conspiracy theorists who are convinced that the New York Public Library is throwing away millions of books unbeknownst to unsuspecting readers who are counting on the books being immediately present in the main library building on 5th Avenue in New York.

Some years ago the NYPL was forced by public opinion (in conjunction with the conspiracy theorists) to back away from a plan to turn old fashioned bookstack areas in the building into useful public amenities. The stacks, deemed by the library’s professional administration to be unfit for modern library storage, with inadequate environmental controls for valuable collections. The plan was to move the books (several million of them) to a more remote location, providing transfer of needed volumes back to the Manhattan location several times a day, at a space of several hours from when the book was requested. Hundreds of libraries in the United States (and worldwide) do this.

The latest twist in this unending saga at NYPL is several the library’s use of variations on the number of books at the 5th Avenue building, varying as much as several million items. NYPL’s explanation is quite straightforward: until recently they didn’t have a modern inventory or library system in which all the items were entered. Previous numbers were based on various estimates. The conspiracy theorists are now at full throttle saying that the library got rid of millions of volumes.

I’m in sympathy with the NYPL. In very large research libraries (and NYPL is among the largest) down to small libraries and the small-ish research library where I am employed, we all have the same problem. I call it the Magic of Libraries.  Others might call it serendipity. Things turn up that you didn’t know you had, uncataloged. Things that are cataloged disappear under unknown circumstances. Sometimes there are entire collections of items that come your way (or, generally, came your way at some previous era, left for someone later to figure out.) Libraries are aeomeba-like, expanding and contracting with minds of their own. But it is because of these factors that a hitherto unknown manuscript by Bach or Mozart turns up in a completely inappropriate spot in a library or archive, centuries after its composition. And no one can explain how it might have gotten there.

Another issue is that library collection size is often calculated by means of formulas based on the size of shelves (standard 3-feet wide), number of shelves, and the type of materials shelved on those shelves. Needless to say, there are fewer volumes of British Parliamentary Papers on a three-foot shelf than, say, items of 2 page Department of Agriculture pamphlets. Inventories are incredibly expensive, labor intensive and time consuming. In a large library, by the time an inventory is finished, it might be anyone’s guess how many things have gone astray in the meantime.

Of course, no amount of factual explanation will satisfy the conspiracy-minded. They demand numbers. Facts. Immutable facts. Sorry, in libraries, that is a pipe dream, even with the most sophisticated inventory system.

 

In memoriam Carl B. Staplin

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Carl Staplin
Carl Staplin

A week ago this evening, my principal organ teacher, Carl Staplin, died at almost 80 years of age. I studied with him from 1970-1974 when I was an undergraduate student at Drake University, in Des Moines, Iowa. I’ll be making a quick trip to Des Moines tomorrow afternoon, and I will be one of the organists for his memorial service on Monday morning at First Christian Church, where he was the organist for decades, presiding over a 1956 Holtkamp organ of great integrity, if not great size.  Indeed, my first church job as a beginning freshman at Drake was as his assistant at First Christian. I had the opportunity week-in-and-week-out to hear him play repertoire, lead hymns (often with dazzling free accompaniments) and accompany the choir, which was conducted at the time by the late Allan Lehl, the director of choruses at Drake. That experience gave me a model to emulate for my 40-year (and ongoing) career that followed.

Carl was a brilliant teacher, patient, but insistent. He could always find something encouraging to say, even after the most dismal lesson. I don’t recall ever hearing him utter an unkind word. He had a friendly smile and greeting for everyone. Although all of his students were expected to study masterpieces of the organ repertoire, he also encouraged students to explore the repertoire of interest to him or her. My own senior recital had Bach, Sweelinck, Hugo Distler, the Roger-Ducasse “Pastorale” (What was he thinking!?), and Ligeti’s “Volumina,” that masterpiece of graphic notation with its use of the organ as non-traditional sound source. I’m sure Carl knew little about the piece when we started, but we plowed through it together. There are probably many teachers with whom I could have studied more repertoire; Carl insisted that things be very well learned over time and usually memorized. The result of that kind of study was that we didn’t necessarily cover lots of pieces but we learned how to listen and learn, a skill that has been my shield for all of my playing career and that has brought me performing opportunities that I might not otherwise have had. Most notoriously, that skill came into use once when I received the invitation in Cleveland with just two weeks notice to perform Jean Langlais’s Messe solennelle at which the composer himself would be present. Although I had heard Langlais’s mass before, I hadn’t played it. All worked out well for the performance.

Another aspect of Carl’s mentorship came in his encouragement of his students to follow their hearts in regard to their careers. I can’t imagine that he didn’t have some amount of disappointment when I decided not to pursue an advanced degree in organ and church music; I instead became a librarian. But if he was disappointed, Carl never uttered a single word of it to me. He has always been tremendously supportive of my library career, and seemed to be proud of my advancement to the upper levels of administration in a university research library. My library career, contrary to being a hindrance, has given me the opportunity to have a profession to “pay the rent,” but letting me pursue the musical career that I wanted, without having to depend on it for my living. It has for me been the best of both worlds, although not without some compromises in the amount of time I’ve had to practice. (Another example of using the skill of knowing how to learn quickly.)

The cadre of organ students at Drake became our ad hoc social group (very few of the students belonged to the Greek organizations that were the hub of social life for many at Drake). The parties at the Staplin home were legendary. Carl’s wife Phyllis, and his two children Elizabeth and Bill, put up with the uproar. Bill was a toddler at the time, and I think he often wanted us just to leave so he could get some sleep.

I’ve spent the last week reflecting on Dr. Staplin’s influence on my life and career, and even now I hesitate to publish this, because a few sentences cannot do justice to his life as a musician, academic, personal mentor and friend, husband and father. Rest well, Carl. Your legacy is secure in the lives of your students, family and friends.

Cameron Carpenter vs. the Mighty Wurlitzer in Akron

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Cameron Carpenter

Last night I heard organist Cameron Carpenter perform at the Akron Civic Theater on its Wurlitzer theater organ, as part of a series sponsored by the University of Akron and E.J. Thomas Hall. Thomas Hall doesn’t have an organ, and Cameron’s long-awaited digital touring organ isn’t yet complete, so he had to do battle with the Wurlitzer, which put up a tough fight, including a couple of ciphers (notes that don’t stop playing when you release the key), but Cameron ultimately prevailed. The audience was slim, filling only the front section of the main floor of the theater. And if the sponsors’ plan was to entice younger people, it didn’t work—the audience was proportionally higher with gray hairs.

Cameron took his bad boy image to the max, at least during the first half of the concert, where he was sullen, sarcastic and never looked at the audience head-on during his remarks between pieces. (He sat half-way on the organ bench and looked at the wings of the stage.) And a lot of what he had to say was just pretentious bullshit, for example, his statement that in playing the Bach G Major Trio Sonata—a very difficult piece technically—one should just relax and let the music play itself. (Not that he cares one iota what I think.) If his idea is to draw new audience to the organ, it seemed an odd way to do it, unless the audience has masochistic fantasies. Do I really need to be talked down to? In the second half, he was remarkably more relaxed, even friendly, as if he had changed his attitude along with his costume.

All that said, there is no one else in the organ performing sphere that has Cameron’s technical skills, and his performances are riveting, if willful and infuriating. The only comparison that might be made would be to the French outlaw virtuoso Jean Guillou, in his prime. I found myself not caring in the least that Cameron’s performances were not “historically informed.” He also played to his own strengths, in his transcriptions and arrangements of other music, starting with an etude based on the first movement of Bach’s first cello sonata. The cello part was played in the pedals, with increasingly complex layering on the manuals above it. He also made an effective transcription of Liszt’s “Funerailles,” originally for piano. It seemed tailor-made for the theater organ. He ended the first half with an austere and mostly atonal composition by a Ugandan composer whose name I did not recognize. (And since there was no printed set list for the concert, I can’t confirm.) With massive sounds, including pedal chords, on full organ, it was as if Cameron truly was trying to test the Wurlitzer to its limits. There weren’t any ciphers after this piece, but there was one after Marcel Dupré‘s “Variations on a Noel,” which Cameron dissected and reassembled in his own fashion. (At least the cipher was on the tonal note of the piece.)

The second half was devoted to lighter fare, a medley of some Gershwin tunes, and ending with three relatively brief improvisations devised by the performer on the spot, including a concluding fugue recognizably, if loosely, based Beethoven’s famous piano piece “Für Elise.”

It was announced that Cameron Carpenter will be back next year with his new touring instrument. Maybe playing on a familiar instrument will put him into a better mood.

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Remembrance of Things Past

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Postcard of the West Side Market in Cleveland,...

This afternoon I went to the West Side Market to order the roasting chickens for Thanksgiving. (No, no turkey for us this year. Neither of us is very fond of it, and chicken tastes better.) I’ve been shopping at the Market regularly (as in several times a month) for over 25 years. What a dispiriting affair it was today. I remember when people used to go there to actually BUY things. Now that Cleveland has been turned into a foodie city, the Market has been turned into a tourist destination. Traffic was backed up to gridlock in the parking lot, which meant circling around ad infinitum. The one Cleveland police officer eventually in sight was shooting the breeze with a vendor inside the market. I eventually gave up and had better luck on a side street south of Lorain Avenue.

I knew that this parking dilemma did not bode well for my shopping experience, so I was not surprised to find the place mobbed with tattooed hipsters with their coffee cups, Beachwood ladies in wildly inappropriate outfits for the West Side Market (Prada, massive jewelry and full make-up are not necessary), suburban people with young children in strollers gawking, stopping dead in their tracks to take photos. As I was leaving, I witnessed the downtown Embassy Suites shuttle van dropping off people. Despite the milling hordes, quite a few of the vendors did not seem to be selling much.

Ohio City, Cleveland
Image via Wikipedia

Until quite recently (i.e., until a year or so ago) the West Side Market had a kind of tacky, rundown charm, where poor people mingled with the middle class eastern European ethnic population of Cleveland’s west side, whose families had been patronizing the market for generations. George and I were relative newcomers, shopping there regularly only since 1983. But over time we have built lasting relationships with various of the vendors, whom I have now patronized and recommended to others for decades.

I know I sound like a grumpy old man, and I should be happy for the Market’s success. West 25th Street and the West Side Market are being promoted like crazy by the city and the other businesses on W.25th Street, and the street is no longer the sketchy and relatively dangerous place it once was. (The Jay Hotel and its unsavory cast of characters is long gone. The hookers and most of the drug dealers have moved on.) But over the last year, it has become such a hassle to park and shop at the Market, that it makes me not want to go there. It’s easier to go to Whole Foods. But the experience is not the same. Tourists are transient, and if the Market loses its historical Cleveland character, including its local shoppers, what will it have left? I hope it doesn’t become Disney-esque, like Legacy Village, Crocker Park or other “lifestyle centers.” It won’t be for real shopping by real people.

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Modern music that doesn’t suck (one in a series): Timothy Andres’ “Shy and Mighty”

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Andres - High and Mighty

My new music recommendation for the day is Timothy Andres’s 2010 album on Nonesuch Shy and Mighty for two pianos.  The music is deceptively simple sounding, but when you listen more carefully it has quite a lot going on, and periodic “explosions” that force you to pay attention.

The composer is one of the pianists on the album, along with David Kaplan.  They are a formidable duo, with unearthly precision.  

I am especially fond of the track “Out of Shape.”